


The Logs

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [170]
Category: The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, back on the Hermes, getting through trauma, the logs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 02:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8039572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: Mark knows NASA is going to release his logs. That's just how they work. The world will see that. His mom will see that.He has months to prepare himself to deal with his mother's reactions.The crew, though. Well, he's stuck with them.





	The Logs

**Author's Note:**

> This is another piece from Tumblr.
> 
> Just Mark dealing with being in a traumatic event and the outcome of his logs.

Mark’s logs, originally made for future astronauts who might venture to the Ares III site and discover the remnants (and, though he doesn’t want to think about it, probably his corpse), get packed onto a flashdrive, stuffed inside his suit, and make the entire journey from the HAB to the MAV with him, and then to the Hermes. He’s not going to die. Well, he may still very well die, but he won’t die in the HAB. And on the off-chance he makes it, he’s going to want his logs.

Really, other than his too-thin and broken body, other than the haunting thoughts, they’re his only way to prove that this was all real.

He lives. And NASA wants his logs.

He debates lying, debates saying he didn’t bring them, didn’t make them, whatever, but it would be an obvious lie. Mark is a well-trained astronaut, and he’s a scientist. Scientists document things. And they don’t lose their documentation. Even if their documentation contains copious bad puns and too many moments of fighting off screaming–at least until he could get the camera off–for any real science to be made of it.

So he has Johanssen send them along, hundreds of videos, hours upon hours of footage.

Mark uncomfortably realizes that anyone in the world with even the remotest desire will see them. That’s how NASA works. They’ll all see it, every moment. Triumphs and failures. Potatoes dipped in Vicodin, disco music, almost dying, and panic attacks.

His Mom doesn’t need to watch that.

While he holds to the above statement, he has months left to worry about what his Mom does or doesn’t watch. His crew, though, not so much.

“You _blew yourself up?”_ Beck demands.

Mark blinks. “I…uh…months ago?”

“It was good chemistry,” Vogel comments, and Mark thinks there might even be admiration here. “Even if it started with bad math.”

“But you blew yourself up, and you never said a word!”

“Why are you watching my logs?” Mark demands.

“Because I’m your doctor and you don’t fucking tell me this shit,” Beck says, exasperated.

Lewis shrugs. “I’m your Commander, and…what he said.”

Mark sighs. “How much have you seen?”

Lewis smiles. “You _liked_  my disco, don’t lie.”

Mark groans. “Not on your life. Stockholm Syndrome, I tell you.”

Everyone just looks at him and Mark sighs again. “You can watch them,” he says in what he feels is a pretty magnanimous tone, never mind that they’re available over every inch of the internet now. “Or…you can ask me.” It’s more than he’s allowed so far. He’s said just enough to get them and NASA off his back, but he doesn’t want to talk about Mars.

The tension hangs thick in the air, and Martinez, being Martinez, interrupts it. “Let’s watch Mark get blown up again.”

Mark groans. “Seriously?”

Martinez levels a finger at him. “I haven’t forgotten what you did to my personals, you know.”

Mark opens his mouth to protest–he needed them, they were left behind–when Johanssen cuts them off with the video of Mark dancing while driving the rover, which she’s apparently looped.

Mark groans, but watches along with the others.

“When you’re ready,” Lewis says quietly, moving closer to him even as her eyes remain on the screen. “We’ll listen.”

Unbelievably, Mark thinks he might be. Not for all of it, not yet. But some of it. He’s ready for them to know. More than that–because if that were the case, they could just watch the videos–he’s ready to tell it, to get it off his chest.

He knows his crew will be there for him when he does.


End file.
